SWALLOW

by Gabrielle Picher

The rough hands frisked her, paused everywhere you’d expect them to
pause, squeezed a little harder than was nice, poked a little deeper than was necessary. Ring Girl was surprised the goon
didn’t strip search her—not that it would have mattered. She did a little curtsey when he was done, and she straightened
her red Tartan skirt that ended a good two inches above her white thigh-high stockings, and she tugged the tight gold brocade
vest that just covered the buds of her breasts, to make the row of cloth buttons straight again.

“Guess you’re clean, freakette,” the goon said, eyeing
her gleaming baldness and the rings and chains that draped from her earlobes to her eyebrows and nose. He handed back her
alligator bag full of thin silver chain.

“So I can go in now and blow the balls off Himself?” She flashed
the thick stud that pierced her tongue.

The goon stepped back and knocked on the bedroom door. A grunt from the other
side was the response. “Dooby sent a package,” the goon said, “You hungry?”

The doorknob turned and the door sighed open. This hotel put the sweet in
suite, she had to give them that much. Shame she’d have to spoil it. The living room with the goon in it had been just
fine, gold and taupe and drapes higher than Himself’s self-regard. But the bedroom—thick red carpet, red velvet
wallpaper, a gold four-poster bed (and it was gold not gilt, she’d bet her box, which was her living), and a glittering
chandelier above —put the grand in grandeur. Real paintings on the ceiling, too, of angels and clouds and shit, like
in pictures she’d seen of palaces in Italy. She didn’t know exactly what Himself did for a living—the newspapers
said something about politics and real estate—but it had to be illegal. This place was that rich.

The odd thing was, in the center of the room was a big flat-screen TV, propped
up on a cart, like being on the wall where it normally would be wasn’t good enough. The screen showed some old black
and white movie. Music, dancing, a guy in a tux, a woman in a classy white gown, looking smart. Ring Girl thought she recognized
the actor, though it seemed to be from narrating one of those Christmas cartoon movies on TV.

Himself himself was wearing a tux and he wore it like he belonged in it.
His hair was slicked back with just enough gel to keep it shiny and neat without being greasy. He had a handsome face and
a trim figure and a bright light in his eyes that wasn’t mean or dirty or dismissive or any of the usual things you
see in the eyes of johns, if you were ever interested enough to look. His monster was deep and well-hidden. Had to be why
he’d gotten away with it for so long. Until now. He looked her up and down, taking in the lack of hair and the piercings.

“Care for a drink?” he said, skimming by her and sighing the
door shut. He smelled of rich cologne.

“Got Champagne?”

“Of course. Tattinger premier cru—”

“I hate Champagne. Got any Stoli?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Rocks? Twist?”

“Both. Please.”

To prepare the drink, he glided way over to the bar on the far side of the
bed. It was a fair distance. You could throw a frisbee. He liked distance, evidently. The girls had all been killed at a distance.
By snipers. Or a sniper, just one: Word was it was the fat man, Weepy Joe. Through boat windows, from rooftops. Noelle in
a nightclub, while she was dancing.

She’d give him his up close.

He presented her drink. He had one of his own. Some big, weighted shot glass,
probably lead crystal, with the vodka neat. He clinked it against hers. “To fun and frolic,” he said.

“Cheers,” she said, and sipped.

He pointed to the television with his chin. “Nothing like it today.
Look at that. Just look.”

She looked. It was pretty cool, actually, the way they could move. Corny
as could be, but special. Elegant. Himself started to dance in place, holding his arms out as if embracing a partner.

“Do you dance?” he said to Ring Girl over his shoulder.

“Didn’t think that was why you asked Dooby to send me over,”
she said.

“No. Suppose it isn’t, is it? But do you?”

“Not like that.” She cocked her hip and he looked her up and
down, imaging her kind of dancing.

“How far we’ve fallen from Fred Astaire,” he said.

She shrugged. He wouldn’t be disappointed. At first.

He held out his hand to her and pointed at the TV with his chin. “Want
to learn?”

“You’re the customer.”

“Come.”

She put her glass down on the floor by the bed and took his hand. He twirled
her and she was against him, fitting the line of his chest and waist and hip as if she’d been made to fit there. He
moved her across the floor effortlessly in time to the music of the movie, singing softly in her ear: “And I seem
to find the happiness I seek...,” touching her the way she imagined a real gentleman touched a real lady. When on
the screen the dancing stopped and conversation started, Fred Astaire was suddenly just a short, skinny guy with a big head.
Himself stopped dancing, too.

“Ain’t it grand?” he said.

“Swell, I think they called it.”

“You’re right.”

Such a goofy grin he had. He was really into this stuff. “Time for
my kind of dancing now?” she said. She undid her top button.

“I asked Dooby for exotic. Apart from bald, you sound like you’re
from Long Island.”

“I am.” She undid another button. “But there are different
kinds of exotic.” And another.

The vest fell to the floor. Her lightly rouged nipples stiffened in the air
conditioning. The rings that pierced them glinted in the light of the chandelier. She teased one of the thin chains out of
her purse, linked one nipple to the other, and ran the rest of its length up the center of her chest and around behind her
neck. She connected it to the ring in the top of her right ear. She rolled her head and her nipples surged.

He said, “Mmmmmm. Interesting.”

“Wait. It gets better.” She undid the clasp in the back of her
skirt. The red plaid fell to the floor, leaving her in nothing but her thigh-high white stockings and green canvas platforms.
“Sit on the edge of the bed,” she said. She gave him a little push.

No, she thought, if I had hair, I’d look like my sister Noelle, the one you had killed...

“I don’t know who that is,” she said.

“The girl you just watched dancing with Fred Astaire,” he said.

“Oh. Her? I’d take it.”

“Keep the chains and rings, though. Kinky. Special.”

“You got that right.” She pushed again. The back of his knees
hit the bed and he sat down. “Sit on your hands,” she said.

“Why?”

“Don’t trust you.”

“Little ol’ me?”

She waited.

He sat on his hands.

She stood six inches in front of him, raised her left leg, placed her foot
on the bed, her knee next to his shoulder.

“Well, well,” he said, his eyes right where she wanted them.
“Isn’t this a mating ritual in the Nile valley? Seem to remember a book of Leni Riefenstahl pictures.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “They call me Ring Girl,”
she said.

“I see why. And how.”

“It gets better.”

“Better yet, even?”

“That’s right.”

Another piece of chain from her purse. This one she attached first to the
span between her breasts and then to the ring through her clitoris.

“Does Ginger what’s-her-name do this?” She moved. He watched.
It worked.

***

They went through all the numbers save one. He was strong. Athletic. He knew
his way around a girl’s body. He even made her come, in spite of herself. He wanted the final number, the one she was
saving, but she stalled him. She used the against-my-policy-without-a-condom line. She kept the line hard. He was being so
gentlemanly about it, as gentlemanly as could be given what they were doing. He pleaded, when he could have easily held her
down and forced her. But she needed him to be completely beside himself with wanting it. Completely off his guard.

When he said, “A thousand extra,” it was time.

“You liked all the other just fine with a condom.”

“But you have such a great mouth.”

She looked down at his gathering hardness, with the kind of look that always
convinced them they were very much wanted. “Two,” she said.

“Jesus. You cunt.”

She grasped him and nuzzled the head with her nose. “Two and I’ll
swallow.” A little wrist action.

“All of it?”

“All of it. Every drop. And like it.” Tomcats do so like to see
where they spray.“And it’ll be very. Very. Messy.”

He swore. “Money’s in the drawer over there. Count carefully.
I’m watching.” She went to the end table he indicated and found an envelope full of hundred dollar bills in the
drawer, next to a rather realistic, if somewhat larger than life, blue dildo. She counted out twenty bills and put them in
her purse.

“Bring the dildo,” he said.

She brought the dildo.

“Show me,” he said.

She sniffed the dildo. It seemed clean. She licked her lips, worked up a
bit of saliva, and inserted it in her mouth. It was about an inch and a half thick and nine inches long. It had veins, frenulum,
balls, the whole works. She sucked it in down to the balls, writhed around a little, tugged her chains, moaned. He got hard
as a rock, harder than before. He grabbed her. He was no longer articulate.

The dildo went flying. She grasped him, got him wet and hot, deepthroated
him violently, squeezed-stopped him from coming once, twice, three times, bringing tears to his eyes.

She jerked, pointing it at her mouth. “Enjoying yourself, Mr. Maldano?”
she said.

“Fuck,” he said.

She stroked it hard and fast. She sucked the head hard as she jerked, let
it pop out of her mouth with a loud slurp, all with I really mean it and want it please please please splash me with all you’ve
got eye contact.

But he was angry.

“What’s the matter?” she said.Then took him all the way in.

“I asked Dooby...” He was out of breath. The monster was in his
eyes now as he propped himself up on his elbows glaring at her. The tricky part—how to do him before he killed her.
“I asked for someone young and out of it.”

She took him out, said, “Can’t a girl read the newspapers?”
and sucked him down deep again. She stroked the spot below his balls and he groaned. He was going to blow any second. She
took him out and licked him there.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Maldano,” she said, jerking for a hard,
hard come. “I’m not interested in any shakedown.”

“Oh, I think we have a little...” She brushed him against her
lips. “...unfinished...” She swirled her tongue around it. “...business...”

She slid him in, to the back of her throat, and out again. “...right
here, don’t you?” She slipped the last chain—with its tiny razor links—around the base of his cock,
swallowed him deep deep deep all the way to his sweaty balls, and just as he began to buck and spurt, yanked the chain like
she was starting a lawnmower and—

Swallowed.

His scream brought the goon. He threw her to the floor. Time was key, now.
She fought the gag reflex as the rapidly deflating tube of flesh made its way down her throat. In a few more seconds, they’d
never be able to find it. Lots of women have severed lots of penises. But few, if any, have ever disposed of it properly,
where it belongs.

Himself and his goon were both screaming now, Himself spurting blood all
over the place and the goon nearly swooning in shock. She wiped the blood from her mouth on the satin sheets, closed her eyes
and took deep breaths through her nose while the two men screamed hysterically.

“...fucking bitch bit it off...”

“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!”

“Get it on ice, mother of God, get it on ice!”

“...but boss, where the fuck is it?”

There.

It was down.

The goon’s hands crushed her throat, lifted her, carried her toward
the window. The room swam as her feet left the floor. Her smooth skull shattered glass and she was outside, arcing fast and
final toward the pavement twenty stories below, with a view of Central Park. Here’s to you, Noelle, she whispered against
the rushing air.

Gabrielle Picher reads a lot of Jane Austen and Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot), yet somehow that
is not reflected in her fiction. She wants to work on that, but her buddies encourage her to keep doing the other thing that
comes so naturally to her, such as this story, her debut at Yellow Mama. Sometimes writing is so embarrassing, but she has
to admit liking the kicked-in-the-face look she can sometimes evoke in a reader. People are peculiar.